The quote receiving attention abroad was the UK Defence Secretary saying that “We are keeping a close eye on the Admiral Kuznetsov as it skulks back to Russia, a ship of shame whose mission has only extended the suffering of the Syrian people.” Of course for me, the money quote was not the “ship of shame” line – to be honest, I had to think for a minute which shame to focus on: the mission, the carrier design, or its operational performance in the Eastern Med? No, I smiled at yet another example of the British accusing their opponents of skulking about – why can’t everybody just be brave and downright like the British?

Forssberg, Anna Maria. The Story of War: Church and Propaganda in France and Sweden 1610–1710. Lund, Sweden: Nordic Academic Press, 2017.

Abstract: ”O God we thank thee” was sung in the churches of France and Sweden after military victories in the seventeenth century. To celebrate Thanksgiving was a way of thanking God, but also a way for the rulers to legitimize the ever ongoing wars. For the inhabitants it was both an occasion for festivity and a way of getting information about what happened in the battlefield. Yet the image given was selective. Bloody defeats and uneventful everyday life was replaced by spectacular victories and royal glory. Even though the rituals in the two countries were similar in some ways, there were also substantial differences. The propaganda formulated a narrative about what war actually was, and what role the rulers and their subjects should play. In the crisis of 1709 this narrative was profoundly challenged. The book investigates how war events were communicated to the inhabitants of France and Sweden in the seventeenth century by the Church, and especially through days of thanksgiving (called Te Deum in France).

Lepri, Valentina. “Military Strategies Versus ‘Humanae Litterae’. The Rules of Domenico Mora, Chief of the Army in 16th-Century Poland.” In Books for Captains and Captains in Books: Shaping the Perfect Military Commander in Early Modern Europe, edited by Marco Faini and Maria Elena Severini, 65–76. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2016.

In other words, war, religion and peace are becoming quite the topic, recall the parallel English publication of The European Wars of Religion: An Interdisciplinary Reassessment of Sources, Interpretations, and Myths, edited by Wolfgang Palaver, Dietmar Regensburger, and Harriet Rudolph. Ashgate, 2016. And that’s a good thing.

And since I’ve already cited one French book, I guess I can cite a few more items:

Denys, Catherine. “Les ingénieurs du roi de France auprès de la couronne d’Espagne (1704-1715) / The Engineers of the King of France with the Ear of the Crown of Spain, 1704–1715.” Vegueta: Anuario de la Facultad de Geografía e Historia, no. 16 (2016): 67–92.

And now that I’ve created separate Zotero records for individual chapters, I can include a few from a previous mention:

Breccia, Gastone. “Virtus Under Fire. Renaissance Leaders in a Deadlier Battlefield.” In Books for Captains and Captains in Books: Shaping the Perfect Military Commander in Early Modern Europe, edited by Marco Faini and Maria Elena Severini, 21–34. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2016.

Faini, Marco. “The Holy Captain: Military Command and Sacredness in the Early-Modern Age.” In Books for Captains and Captains in Books: Shaping the Perfect Military Commander in Early Modern Europe, edited by Marco Faini and Maria Elena Severini, 117–34. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2016.

Manfredini, Ilario. “The Image of the ‘Soldier Prince’ in Florence and Turin in the Second Half of the Sixteenth Century.” In Books for Captains and Captains in Books: Shaping the Perfect Military Commander in Early Modern Europe, edited by Marco Faini and Maria Elena Severini, 165–76. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2016.

Vesiero, Marco. “‘Risistere Alla Furia De’ Cavagli E Degli Omini D’arme’. A Lost Book for a Condottiere by Leonardo Da Vinci.” In Books for Captains and Captains in Books: Shaping the Perfect Military Commander in Early Modern Europe, edited by Marco Faini and Maria Elena Severini, 103–16. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2016.

And lest we forget how nasty warfare really is:

Hall, Dianne. “‘Most Barbarously and Inhumaine Maner Butchered’: Masculinity, Trauma, and Memory in Early Modern Ireland.” In The Body in Pain in Irish Literature and Culture, edited by Fionnuala Dillane, Naomi McAreavey, and Emilie Pine, 39–55. Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.

Peters, Erin. “Trauma Narratives of the English Civil War.” Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 16, no. 1 (Winter 2016).

Sandberg, Brian. “‘His Courage Produced More Fear in His Enemies than Shame in His Soldiers’: Siege Combat and Emotional Display in the French Wars of Religion.” In Battlefield Emotions 1500-1800: Practices, Experience, Imagination, edited by Erika Kuijpers and Cornelis van der Haven, 127–48. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.

Martínez, Miguel. Front Lines: Soldiers’ Writing in the Early Modern Hispanic World. S.l.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016.

Abstract: In Front Lines, Miguel Martínez documents the literary practices of imperial Spain’s common soldiers. Against all odds, these Spanish soldiers produced, distributed, and consumed a remarkably innovative set of works on war that have been almost completely neglected in literary and historical scholarship. The soldiers of Italian garrisons and North African presidios, on colonial American frontiers and in the traveling military camps of northern Europe read and wrote epic poems, chronicles, ballads, pamphlets, and autobiographies—the stories of the very same wars in which they participated as rank-and-file fighters and witnesses. The vast network of agents and spaces articulated around the military institutions of an ever-expanding and struggling Spanish empire facilitated the global circulation of these textual materials, creating a soldierly republic of letters that bridged the Old and the many New Worlds of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.Martínez asserts that these writing soldiers played a key role in the shaping of Renaissance literary culture, which for its part gave to them the language and forms with which to question received notions of the social logic of warfare, the ethics of violence, and the legitimacy of imperial aggression. Soldierly writing often voiced criticism of established hierarchies and exploitative working conditions, forging solidarities among the troops that often led to mutiny and massive desertion. It is the perspective of these soldiers that grounds Front Lines, a cultural history of Spain’s imperial wars as told by the common men who fought them.

Peters, Kate. “The Quakers and the Politics of the Army in the Crisis of 1659.” Past & Present, May 16, 2016.

And, most surprising of all, I just learned that my very own regional public university has hired someone who actually studies early modern (Spanish) military culture, so her work deserves a shout out as well: